Ouch! A complete loss for our heroes. Worse they got their collective butts kicked besides; temporarily incapacitating Tsukuyomi and Susanoo and badly damaging the Colossus, but never really doing anything more than cosmetic damage to Precia and Amaterasu, and in return they got Hayate and Signum nearly eliminated and Yuuno and Fate completely out, lucky to be alive. And Enlil (and her no-doubt-overwhelming power level) hasn't even stepped onto the field yet. Whew!

(This, incidentally, presents this chapter's greatest strength and greatest weakness simultaneously. On the good side, the suspense is high, the "How the heck are we going to stop these guys!?!" question. On the bad side, the end with Enlil implies that the next step is for the enemy to teleport back home with a cry of some variation on, "Ha, ha, we accomplished our goal! Lo-sers!" The problem there is that I see no reason why Amaterasu (supposedly a great tactician and murderously inclined) and Precia (utterly crazy and in addition just as utterly loathing and despising Fate and Fate's TSAB palsy-walsies) would consider retreat a valid option. That is, Vita and Chrono are the only TSAB fighters in any kind of undamaged condition at this point and we've seen nothing that suggests that Amaterasu can't take the two of them out by her lonesome. Which leaves beat-up Nanoha and Zaffy, nearly dead Signum and Hayate, and Shamal to take on Precia, a beat-up Susanoo, a badly damaged Tsukuyomi, and whatever the Colossus has left. Or in other words, if the villains don't stick around to try to slaughter everybody, it's going to take some serious justification, or in the alternative a Really Cunning Lindy Plan to explain why the good guys get to live to try to save the day later.)

As always, the fight scenes were exciting and full of snappy patter and Rule of Cool, particularly anything involving Vita, who you do wonderfully (Signum and Chrono aren't bad, either, though you're still getting your feet under Hayate...who's actually kind of hard to do because so little of what we see with Hayate is her in direct conflict). Amaterasu in battle is just scary (although epically less irritating than Amaterasu OUT of battle...).

Not much else to say at this point, with the epic battle of the last few chapters wrapping up. It looks like the villains are about to unleash their scheme on the unsuspecting worlds of dimensional space, so I'm guessing we'll have a chapter or so of "down time" to contemplate how epically we're all screwed before the Final Battle begins...

Only one out-and-out mistake stood out; I don't recall Raising Heart having a "Buster Form"; I think you're thinking of Accel Form. If you're looking for Nanoha Sound Stage translations, meanwhile, there's a dedicated thread for it in the AnimeSuki Nanoha subforum, where 14 out of the 16 are completely translated.

Oh Shoot! Darn it, not only is the battle still raging, but again the antagonists have the upper hand! The advantage has been bouncing back and forth between the two sides like a tennis match. It's great drama, but my heart can't take the excitement. =P

Actually, upon reflection, the person I _really_ want to see take Precia down is Lindy. Yeah, that would rock! "Don't touch _my_ daughter, Bitch!" *beamspam of awesomeness*

ahah.

Awesome as usual!

:D

i luv this fic!! ^^ i love the part about THE HAT and the excuse Vita gave was IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING! excuse. Hahahaha. i was laughing half the time but it is kinda nerve cracking when i realized that susa is gonna shoot Hayate. I also luv the part where Hayate says bye bye and then BOOM! hahaha. hilarious! XD

Best. Nanoha Fic. Ever.

That is all.

Haha, look at that, DezoPenguin's on board now. Excellent.

One of these days someone's going to have to teach Hayate to Blood Riot like a proper Yagami, but for now hitting stuff with a magic nuclear missile or two sounds just fine.

Enlil was male, wasn't he? Are you sure you don't mean Ishtar/Inanna, or are you playing fast & loose with Sumerian mythology?

I have only one thing to say: HOW HAVE I MISSED THIS STORY?!?!?!?

Okay, so I actually have more to say, and lots that's going to end up unsaid because it got forgotten along the way through the story where I'd have mentioned it. This is an excellent piece of fiction. As you note, the tone tends to be humorous, with the characters' personalities exaggerated...in essence, it reads like it's one of the Sound Stages, except instead of stupid fanservice gags, you're giving us action and drama in spades, and leavening it with some excellent lines. The tone of the fight scenes is especially perfect--they play out *exactly* like the fights do in the anime itself, with wild awesomeness, Rule of Cool all over the place, and new tricks being pulled out of the bag every time. The dialogue is funny and awesome, and while everyone is slightly over-the-top from the usual selves, the fact that the enemies are *completely* over-the-top helps to blunt the effect of that. Nanoha, especially, shines here: she's way down my "favorite character" list in the anime but here I'm actually looking forward to whatever line comes up next from her.

(I also note that one way you follow the anime is that the enemy's power level is...exactly whatever it needs to be to suit the drama. Admittedly, you do at least offer a hint about their sudden power-up for the later chapters, where Enlil notes that they were fighting at reduced power and it's implied that a solution was being implemented, but Susanoo, especially, seems to have gotten a serious Power Up between the previous fight and the "current" one.)

A selection of great bits: Fate's commentary on the difference between Signum and Susanoo's attitudes. Arf biting the pirate. Arf generally, come to think of it. Yuuno's archaeologist rage towards tomb raiders. Chrono being the butt of the universe's jokes. A genuinely interesting-without-getting-too-complex lost civilization enemy. Yuuno's big shielding moment. Lindy playing with Amy's head. Your author's note when you realized that Chrono was older than you thought he was (incidentally, check the cover and interior art for Sound Stage SSX--Erio and Caro actually have aged; ViVid's artist just draws everyone babyish). VITA AND THE HAT!

"Pulling a Chrono" should be immediately added to everybody's fanon dictionary. Seriously.

It's funny. I was reading the bit where you had Nanoha thinking "If only I had a physical attack" and I immediately thought--"But she has Stardust Fall." And then you have her *invent* it in the next scene!

While I'm not much for the "mix fan romanizations with official ones at the author's whim" idea, I can forgive "Asura" easily because you avoided my number-one naming pet peeve and used Laevatein for Signum's device (seriously, "Laevatein" is a legendary demonic fire sword popular as a weapon in various Japanese video games, while "Levantine" is the ethnicity of a character played by Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon. Which fits Signum's Armed Device better?).

One nitpick: None of Hayate's devices is an Intelligent Device. Reinforce Zwei is a Unison Device (hence her ability to Unison with people), the Tome of the Night Sky is a Storage Device (like Durandal), and Schwartzkreuz is an Armed Device (like Graf Eisen or Laevatein).

All in all, despite the use of the "Precia returns!!" plot idea (an almost hackneyed one by now, especially since the prologue completely advertises what's going to happen so much that the reveal wasn't at all surprising), "Infinity" has firmly established itself as my second-favorite Nanoha fanfic, and you can darned well bet I won't be overlooking any future chapters!

Agreed on Yuuno, and on letting every character shine at least once. However, I don't think you necessarily need to TOP the last and current chapters -- simply maintaining or matching the level of awesome would suffice. That said, I wouldn't yet discount your ability to top yourself.

Signum's latent bloodlust must be the real reason she's called "the Fiery General." It's nice to see other sides of Signum.

Yes, one could say that Vita's regard for Hayate is somewhat religious. And it was a great idea to have Vita re-use a classic line.

Vita's metal balls are actually automatically-homing missiles, not consciously directed ones. Disrupting her concentration would not cause them to fail. As befits a melee berserker, Vita's long-range attacks are "fire and forget," allowing her to concentrate on closing range and striking. Directed-control attacks would require her to stay at a distance, which is her weakest combat range.

Also, there really should have been a mention of the Giganto Crusher attack's name. Sad to see Raketenhammerform getting no love, but Gigantform is actually probably a much better idea against a polearm-user anyway. Which makes it fine that she uses it against Zest, but Rocket Hammer really would have been useful against all the drones she fights in StrikerS.

It would be funny for Hayate and Amaterasu to meet and argue about cosplay and moe. I still want to see the two respective fire-wielding unit-commanders take each other on, and I wonder how Vita and Susanoo would interact.

It's nice to see Hayate face an honest challenge, but after she destroys the Colossus, is anyone a proper match-up for her? Aside from WMD robots, is there a suitable dramatic opposite for her? Will she or Fate fight Precia? Is it Chrono or Nanoha who faces Enlil?

Again, Susanoo's behavior suggests that whatever the Twilight Dynasty is trying to accomplish, mass murder is probably not a likely outcome. So what ARE they plang to do?

as always, frigging awesome.

The situation here isn't spectacularly better than it was last chapter: Hayate's close to being ganked, Signum has to let Zafira be double teamed, and Vita just woke up the beast.

Oh well, at least they're not all dead yet. Should be fun to see what happens. It's too bad Hayate's not capable of her "fuck everything up from range" tactics yet, but it's sensible.

One point. The book Hayate carries around isn't the original Tome of the Night Sky at all. It's a modern book-type Storage Device with the same cover design and given the same name as the Tome. The original Tome had to be destroyed (not just wiped) it was the only way to make sure it wouldn't respawn its Defense Program and consume Hayate eventually.
And I don't think you can refer to Precia as "miss." "Ms." or "madam" might be more accurate.

Awesome chapter! Oh drat, Cliffhanger. Awesome Chapter! Oh drat, Cliffhanger. Awesome... you get the idea. ^^ Scary, scary, though, that things are still escalating. I would have figured that the Trio and the bitch would have retreated, having basically achieved their aims, even if they hadn't managed to deal with the TSAB team (our Heroes! yay). I guess we're still missing a classic Takamachi moment- Maximum Power Maximum Effort TM. Hey, she managed a SB with a disrupted/drained linker core, a full penetration stab wound (barely healed) shouldn't be much more difficult,and she's got Excellion Mode. Ought to be plenty of magic around to charge up with, as long as Amaterasu doesn't notice. Oh wait- there's still the last second teleport option! =P The barrier's down, after all, so maybe it would be a good idea to get everyone on board the "Good ship Asura?" Love to see how our gang is going to deal with the Wolkies parole violation, but they have to survive first...Unfortunately, any future meetings between the Gods Trio and the Young Aces (and sidekicks) is going to leave little room for negotiations. Though I expect Nanoha will _try_.

More, please, hopefully soon.

...WO! I just read the entire 14 chapters in one sitting. THIS IS THE MOST FUCKING AWESOME NANOHA FIC I'VE SEEN IN YEARS. You have GOT to keep this gold nugget shining, man! PLEASE don't keep us waiting too long! ...I wanna see Signum vs. Precia, perhaps?